In a teleoperator work station where movable cameras are viewing the workspace, any panning, tilting or rolling of the cameras causes a misalignment between the coordinate system of the camera and the coordinate system of the operator viewing the monitor. For example, if the camera pans 15.degree. to the left, the "straight ahead" direction on the monitor will actually be 15.degree. to the left. If a robot hand controller is pushed "forward," the robot will move forward but will be seen on the monitor to move at an angle of 15.degree. to the right. This causes the operator to continuously need to mentally transform coordinates during operation, thus causing an increase in workload as well as an increase in the probability of operator error. If several movable cameras are presenting their images to several monitors, each may require a different coordinate transformation. The increase in workload and probability of operator error may well become unmanageable and dangerous.
Another problem in teleoperation is that operators have different individual characteristics which play a role in performing different tasks. When performing a task of a particular type, one operator may perform best when the cameras are arranged to provide three right angle views of the workspace. Another operator may prefer a standard perspective-projection view and thus place the cameras and monitors to provide that view. One operator may desire the hand controller to have a large gain, i.e., to have small hand-controller motions cause large remote robot manipulator or vehicle motions. Another operator may desire a smaller gain, making up in precision what is lost in velocity. One operator may prefer the monitors to be located on a plane, closely packed together and facing the operator while another operator may prefer the monitors to be located on a virtual sphere, facing inward toward the center of the sphere with the operator's head located at the center of the sphere, etc. Still other arrangements of cameras and/or monitors and assignments of specific camera images to specific monitors may prove to be advantageous for different operators.
Considering that people fall into distinct categories, particularly in terms of perception and physical performance (left brain versus right brain, stereo blind versus high stereo acuity, etc.), it is quite unreasonable to assume that one arrangement of cameras and monitors can provide all operators with what they need to optimally perform a wide variety of tasks. It would be desirable to determine which arrangement of multiple cameras and monitors, and which configuration of control station parameters, e.g., hand-controller gain, yields optimal performance for each type of task for each individual operator. The optimal conditions to be set up include not only the viewing arrangement, i.e., position and orientation of the cameras but also assignments of monitors to cameras and the configuration of system parameters.
Once the optimal viewing arrangement and configuration of system parameters is determined for each type of task for each operator, it would be further desirable to have the control station computer set up the optimal viewing arrangements and configurations of system parameters automatically for each type of task for each operator in order to facilitate shifting from one type of task to another and to facilitate changing operators.